La Danse—The Paris Opera Ballet gives Wiseman another chance—after Ballet, his 1995 film about the American Ballet Theater—to indulge a love of dance and study the grinding gears of an artistic organization. There are numerous rehearsal scenes with dancers and choreographers, and Wiseman's patient gaze, unbroken with the sort of zippy cutting one expects in a dance documentary, conveys the amount of grueling, physically stressful work that goes into the illusion of easy grace we witness onstage.

But these scenes are punctuated with others that examine the more prosaic aspects of the Paris Opera Ballet. In the business offices, fundraisers confer with the ballet's artistic director about a backstage tour that will give cushy American benefactors (including some from Lehman Brothers) more bang for their 25,000 bucks. Elsewhere at the opera house, seamstresses work on the dancers' costumes, makeup artists carefully paint the performers, workmen paint and repair ceiling plaster, cafeteria workers dish out lunch to the employees, and—who knew?—a beekeeper monitors his honeycombs on the roof.